, 1887-09-07
THE cApucHlN T

Their Queer Ornaments Made of Human
Bnmes-s keleton of IA Dead Brother.
The Capuchin brother attired in his
long habit of coarse brown frieze, his
waist encircled by a hempen rope, his
5toolihgless feet bound in sandals, his I'M
,riDi!ned beard and shorn head bare, ex-
&c, for a diminutive scull cap, is a
familiar sight on the streets in Rome,
which he patiently traverses, carrying an
eartien pitcher as a receptacle, while he
begs aims from house to house.
There is a peculiarly stolid expression
on the faces of these men, as though
everything human, or, at all events,
everything bordering on the highest attri-
butes Of humanity, had been stamped out
of their" nature, leaving a mere machine
an unwashed one at that.
The Church of the Fraternity is in the
piazza of the same name, in the imme-
diate vicinity of the Piazza Barberini. 1t
was founded by Cardinal Barberini,
brother of Pope Urban VIII, in 1924
same cardinal who was the friend of
Milton when he visited the Eternal City
in 1888. The church contains the tomb
Of the founder and many remarkable
treasures of art, including the magnif-
cent painting by Guido, representing
Michael the Archangel trampling the
devil-the latter a portrait of Pope limo
cent X, for whom the painter seems to
have had an inveterate hatred.
Passing through the church a few steps
to the right will cad you to as CHASTITY
and at the same time as grotesquely hor-
rible il spectacle as the most morbid
searcher after flesh creeping experiences
can possibly desire. A series of four
connected small apartments, the floors
of which are made of earth, said
to have been carried from Jerusa-
lem, contain the horrors 1 speak
of. The wall and ceiling are liber-
ally decorated with ornamental devices
constructed by cunning workmen out of
human bones. The bones of the verte-
bra, wrists and ankles are arranged SO as
to describe circles and curves. These
figures are interspersed here and there
with skulls, femurs and humerus, tibias,
fibulas, ulnas and radius.
The same horrid ornaments are ar
ranged around the person of a deceased
brother, who appears suspended against
the middle of a wall, incased in the
coarse brown cloth, the garment he lived,
died and was buried in. The dried skin
clinging to the face of the skeleton grins
in horrible mockery as the living brother,
his former companion in the flesh, con-
ducts you around this decorated charnel
house. He looks as though he chuckled
over the fact of having been released
from the grave below to give place to a
brother more recently defunct, for it is
the rule Of the fraternity-who are COM
PEELED to make a small burial ground
meet the requirements of the order
when a death takes place to dig up the
longest inferred to make room for his
successor.
There is Il quality in the earth en-
ployed that has the effect of preventing
decay of the body, drying it up in
mummy fashion, and preserving the hair,
presenting a far more horrible effect than
if bleached bones were presented to
view.
There is a weird uncanniness about
this strange mixture of the living and
dead, the latter Invested of solemnity by
environment of ornamental ~osteology,
while the air of the survivor seems toned
down to an unnatural sepulchralness-a
sort of half way condition between life
and the tomb.-Rome Cor. San Francisco
Chronicle.